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3925Re: [agile-usability] Joy in work [was: interminable]

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Ron Jeffries

Dec 1, 2007

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Hello, Brian. On Sunday, November 11, 2007, at 2:34:38 PM, you
wrote:

> In fact, I'd go further. I claim that an error of the original
> manifesto was that it left some values out that, as it happens,
> should have been explicit. One of those is that work should be
> joyful. Back in the first half of this decade, people on teams used
> to tell me, "This is the best project I've ever worked on!" I'm
> unhappy that what I hear today is more "my job doesn't suck as much
> as it used to". We've let joy in work slip away in our effort to
> appeal to more people.

This is a tough one, for sure. I have guided my work life in large
part from a joy focus, or at least by noticing, sometimes later than
I should, that joy was absent, and moving to a place in the currents
where more joy comes floating by. I would hope that everyone can
find joy in what they do, though it seems to me that many never do.

Despite the truth of the notion, it seems unlikely to "sell" to
business people. This means that it will be "good business" for
Agilist business people to downplay this and other humanistic
values, so as to appeal to "hard-nosed" business people.

I think that what might work in that regard is to find, describe,
ultimately "prove" that working in ways that give more joy also
gives better business results. This means that the "ways" in
question have to be things to do that are not so much like "follow
your bliss" and a lot like "make sure your people take the time to
write unit tests because your product will reach an acceptable level
of quality faster." This would need to be true, of course, and in
fact I think it is. Then it needs to turn out that having and taking
the time to write the tests provides an increment of joy to the
programmers, which certainly can be the case.

In any case ... it just seems darned hard to address these things,
and it really could get in the way of at least some people's
business focus on selling Agile. I'm very interested and not very
certain what ought to be done.

Lead us ...

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
I know we always like to say it'll be easier to do it now than it
will be to do it later. Not likely. I plan to be smarter later than
I am now, so I think it'll be just as easy later, maybe even easier.
Why pay now when we can pay later?